Speaking from a personal preference, I do prefer the path of mitigating and lessening the impact of incoming damage.

As a holy/disc priest: Renew and Power Word: Shield, does do a nice job to help out mitigate damage as it is incoming. lessening the amount of catch up work for spot healing etc.

Case in point: Last Thursday ICC 10 run, Took in as healing 2 restoration shamans, one of them went Enhancement for fights not 3 healed, and me as Holy Paladin. With little to none damage mitigation…the healing felt like a constant rat race to keep raid members alive. Pure unadulterated brute force healing. It’s like taking a sledge-hammer to open a walnut.

Last nights continuation of thursday: 1 resto/enhancement shaman, 1 resto druid, and me once again as the sledge-hammer healer. Went to Prof. Put 1st. 1 shotted. The ability to not have to constantly heal and lessening the damage is noteworthy. Also worth noting is Trees are king/queens of healing on the run, which is important in the final phase of the Prof Put fight. While i was running in position for next heal, I could trust the druid for a o shit heals when needed. And HoTs are HAWT. Yeah I know bad pun. Bite me.

Or when I am on my disc priest. The bubbles go a long way to help the dmg among the raid members. The same could be said for renews on the raid as well, but druids still beat holy priests in the facility. Also with my holy spec I need about 130 more haste. Want to be able to get off 5 renews before CoH cooldown is back up. So will need about 750-800 haste, I am at 680 or so. Tonight going to swap out some more gems…prob going to get some more Reckless Ametrines (+12 SP and +10 haste rating)

Its nice to see in Cata. that resto shamans will get a AoE HoT. But the holy paladin…the sledge hammer healer…lol will appear to be the same for the most part.

I know sacred shield mitigates a small amount of damage but…its still so little.

Also question….I do not quite have this down and I may be doing this wrong. Beacon one of the tanks…right?

Also how much haste? Holy Light is the nuke in the Holy Pallys arsenal but damn it takes a while to cast. Is there a specific rotation? I normally when pull is incoming….FoL, HS, and then Holy Light. I fear is i cast HL tank will be dead on initial pull. ><Especially on that BPC fight.

Don’t get me wrong Holy Pally healing is fun. Just takes some getting used to. Not used to playing the catch up in healing game anymore.

If anything was borking things up to any considerable extent it was the fact that I’ve never even seen any of the fights past Putricide.

Sorry for being such a defective with the placement on Cindy, BTW. I kept mistaking the phases so I’d run for the ice block when I shouldntabeen.

Hurf durf.

And as for the shielding issue.. I’ve been doing a little research on PW:S and nobody seems to be able to tell me directly whether the Absorb effect kicks in Before or After you get a chance to Block/Dodge/Parry, but since the Absorb effect is apparently adjusted by armor I’m led to believe it is.

If that’s the case, then there isn’t as much of a detriment to Shields of any nature, since I still get mana returns for Parry/block/dodge/ and my melee swings.

So shield away, basically.

Like I said if I get low on mana I’ll start to whine and maybe we’ll need to adjust something, but generally I don’t go OOM in serious boss fights, that’s more of an issue in Randoms when the fights last <15s and I don't get a chance to recoup my losses from using my threatbuilders because everything dies too quick and I don't need much healing.

I thought I read somewhere shields some in 1st but I maybe wrong. If the game allowed your to block, parry, or dodge before the shield…and you hypothetically avoided everything before the shield came into effect..would be broken as shit.

FFXI when they introduced ninja opened a can of worms they probably did not intend to open. Utsusemi: Ichi and Utsusemi NI casts shadows of yourself which could 100% absorb dmg from you. But at the same time you could avoid attacks etc, and that was taken into account before shadows came into play. So me being a ninja tank..i could really avoid all sorts of dmg. Weaving the Ichi and Ni version of spells made it broken. Take into account the dmg mitigation of a paladin main job and ninja subkob…yeah….paladin tanks when i left FFXI…broken as shit.

FFXI did attempt to fix the Utsusmi issue where any ranged attack automatically hit a shadow 1st and single target spells knocked a shadow down. And AOE spells wiped them all, but utsusemi is still a broken mechanic.

But back on subject…if WoW checked avoidance stats before the shield….yeah would be broken imo.

However: Remember that Utsu absorbed infinite amounts of damage. 1 charge would cover the nastiest hit from any mob in the game.

Not the case with PW:S or other shields in WoW.

And only Dodge/Parry is ‘true’ miti, Block absorbs some additional damage but it’s nowhere near what would be needed to fully absorb a boss hit. Also physical mitigation does nothing against magic. You get hit in the face every time.

I don’t have a good estimate of how much a shield covers with talents and all that, but I doubt it’s going to stay around for 15 seconds versus any kind of serious bossage.

If a tank has enough mitigation to avoid getting hit except for what would be ‘covered’ by the shield in the space of 15 seconds it’s not the shield that’s busted, it’s the tank.

In any case, wether the shield works one way or another I still say shield early, shield often. >.>

I’ve leveled that priest almost entirely healing a pally tank so we played around a lot with the shields and whether or not to use them. Early in the fight, when you’re at the most mana anyway, the shields are incredibly effective. As the fight wears on, I may be less likely to be able to refresh the shield (between weakened soul and trying to mitigate damage going to people on fire or saving my own skin), not to mention there should be some form of replenishment (I hope) and you always have Divine Plea or switching up seals/judgments. Lots of ways around it, and the little bit of mitigation that the bubbles provide seems to help.

Agree 100% at the initial start of a fight I will bubbles a pally but later on I may not as much. i.e. mana gains etc a paladin needs, this is especially true in a 5 man. in a normal 10 man…depends on the fight. Some of those bosses hit pallys hard. A druid or a warrior or a DK i will constantly have weakened soul on them.

Myerm.. My experience is is I’m more prone to going OOM in 5-mans, especially 5-mans with a lot of DPS or jumpy DPSers. If I have to put out a lot of threat off the bat then my mana just flushes away and I never get a chance to get it back, really. The antidote is to run to the next encounter to keep Div.Plea from wearing off, and it works out, sort of.

In more sedate groups I can get away with tossing doing my low-cost abilities and then just sort of sitting back and seeing if anybody’s going to out-threat me before the end of the fight.

Actually the entire reason I have Alchemy is so I have that Endless Mana pot to suck on in 5-man’s. I keep it on my helm with a little sippy-straw.

In 10s or larger content it’s not usually an issue, though. Div.Plea will be going most if not all of the time and I’m usually getting large healing returns because I’m getting my face pushed in.

To to tell you you’re wrong, but you are a little bit wrong slice. lol. Shamans have a talent called ancestral fortitude. I lowers physical damage taken by 15% for the next 12 seconds. It is applied to a target when a healing spell crits. For the most part, I would agree, shamans don’t do shit to capitalize on this, however, if you create a specific healing rotation you can force a spell to crit. Using this, you can keep the buff on the tank at all times. Unfortunately, this lowers said shamans healing, however, having 15% less damage being taken by half the raid would, in my opinion, count as mitigation. ; )
Oh, and fall damage is physical damage, so any fight where raid members get thrown, and someone with very low health doesn’t die, that was me.

Hmmm. I dont know much about shaman’s except for ES, CH, and the occasional riptide. lol.

Guess I should watch the buffs on people more often. 15% is quite nice. but yes, i would agree if you are focusing on that you are gonna lower your overall HPS. 15% is dmg reduction but as shaman’s no offense Hex :P You guys are great healer for pure HPS and pumping out the heals on people. Not too many shaman’s I see play the Ancestal recall game :Hmmmm wonder if i could pull that off…well that is if i had a 80 shaman.

I was mostly just teasing you. I know we’re most pure healers. And although I can keep the buff on about half the raid fairly consistently, it’s not worth it. However, I do keep in on the tank at all times. Next time you’re healing with me, you should check it out.